How To Work With People From A Variety Of Social, Economic And Ethnic Backgrounds

Larn how to understand cultures and build relationships with people from other cultures.

Photo of people in a circle with their hands in the middle

Relationships are powerful. Our one-to-one connections with each other are the foundation for alter. And edifice relationships with people from different cultures, oftentimes many different cultures, is key in building various communities that are powerful enough to achieve pregnant goals.

Whether y'all desire to make certain your children get a good education, bring quality health care into your communities, or promote economic evolution, there is a good chance you will need to work with people from several unlike racial, language, ethnic, or economic groups. And in order to work with people from different cultural groups finer, you lot will demand to build sturdy and caring relationships based on trust, agreement, and shared goals.

Why? Considering trusting relationships are the mucilage that concur people together as they work on a common problem. As people piece of work on challenging bug, they volition accept to hang in there together when things get hard. They will have to support each other to stay with an try, even when it feels discouraging. People will have to resist the efforts of those who use split-and-conquer techniques--pitting 1 cultural group against another.

Regardless of your racial, ethnic, religious, or socioeconomic group, y'all will probably demand to establish relationships with people whose group you may know very little about.

Each ane of us is similar a hub of a wheel. Each 1 of the states tin build relationships and friendships around ourselves that provide us with the necessary force to achieve community goals. If each person builds a network of various and potent relationships, nosotros can come together and solve problems that we have in mutual.

In this department, we are going to talk about:

Becoming enlightened of your own culture as a first step in learning about other people'south civilization.
Edifice relationships with people from many different cultures.

Simply showtime allow's talk well-nigh what culture is. Culture is a complex concept, with many different definitions. But, simply put, "culture" refers to a group or community with which we share common experiences that shape the manner nosotros sympathize the world. Information technology includes groups that we are built-in into, such as race, national origin, class, or religion. It can besides include groups we bring together or become part of. For example, we tin acquire a new culture by moving to a new region, by a modify in our economic status, or by becoming disabled. When we think of culture this broadly we realize we all belong to many cultures at once. Practise you agree? How might this employ to yous?

How do yous acquire almost people'due south cultures?

Starting time past becoming aware of your own culture.

It may seem odd that in order to larn about people in other cultures, we start by becoming more aware of our own culture. But we believe this is true. Why?

If you lot haven't had a run a risk to understand how your culture has afflicted you first hand, it'south more difficult to understand how it could affect anyone else or why information technology might exist important to them. If you are comfortable talking virtually your own culture, then y'all will become improve at listening to others talk about theirs. Or, if you lot empathize how bigotry has afflicted you, then yous may be more aware of how it has affected others.

Here are some tips on how to becoming more than aware of your ain culture:

What is your culture?

Exercise y'all have a culture? Do you have more than one? What is your cultural groundwork?

Even if y'all don't know who your ancestors are, you have a culture. Even if you are a mix of many cultures, y'all take one. Civilisation evolves and changes all the time. It came from your ancestors from many generations ago, and it comes from your family and community today.

In add-on to the cultural groups we belong to, nosotros also each take groups nosotros identify with, such as existence a parent, an athlete, an immigrant, a small business owner, or a wage worker. These kinds of groups, although not exactly the same every bit a culture, have similarities to cultural groups. For instance, being a parent or and an immigrant may be an identity that influences how you lot view the globe and how the earth views you. Becoming aware of your different identities can help y'all understand what information technology might be like to belong to a cultural grouping.

Exercise:

Attempt listing all the cultures and identities you accept: (This is just a list of suggestions to go you started. Add as many every bit you recall describe you.)

What is your:

Religion
Nationality
Race
Sexual identity
Ethnicity
Occupation
Marital condition
Age
Geographic region

Are y'all:

A female person
A male
Nonbinary or genderqueer
Disabled
From an urban area
From a rural surface area
A parent
A student

Have you ever been:

In the military
Poor
In prison house
Wealthy
In the heart class
In the working course

Did this assist you call back near your identities and cultures? How have these different cultures and identities affected your life?

How do you build relationships with people from other cultures?

There are many ways that people can learn about other people's cultures and build relationships at the same time. Hither are some steps you can have. They are first listed, and so elaborated upon one at a time.

Make a conscious decision to establish friendships with people from other cultures.
Put yourself in situations where you lot will meet people of other cultures.
Examine your biases about people from other cultures.
Enquire people questions about their cultures, community, and views.
Read about other people's civilization's and histories
Listen to people tell their stories
Notice differences in communication styles and values; don't presume that the majority'southward way is the right way
Risk making mistakes
Learn to exist an ally.

Make a conscious determination to establish friendships with people from other cultures

Making a determination is the start stride. In order to build relationships with people different from yourself, you accept to make a concerted effort to practise and then. There are societal forces that serve to separate us from each other. People from different economic groups, religions, ethnic groups, and races are often isolated from each other in schools, jobs, and neighborhoods. And so, if we want things to be different, we need to take active steps to make them different.

Yous can bring together a sports squad or club, go active in an organisation, cull a task, or motility to a neighborhood that puts y'all in contact with people of cultures different than your ain. Also, you may want to take a few minutes to notice the diversity that is presently nearby. If you recall virtually the people you run into and interact with every twenty-four hours, you may become more than enlightened of the cultural differences that are effectually yous.

Once you have fabricated the decision to make friends with people different from yourself, you can go alee and brand friends with them in much the same way equally with anyone else. You may need to take more time, and you may demand to be more persistent. You may need to reach out and take the initiative more than than y'all are used to. People who have been mistreated past lodge may have more fourth dimension to trust you than people who haven't. Don't let people discourage you. In that location are good reasons why people have built upwardly defenses, merely it is not impossible to overcome them and make a connexion. The effort is totally worth it.

Put yourself in situations where you will encounter people of other cultures; especially if you haven't had the experience of being a minority, take the risk.

One of the first and most important steps is to prove up in places where you will run across people of cultures other than your own. Go to meetings and celebrations of groups whose members you desire to get to know. Or hang out in restaurants and other gathering places that different cultural groups go. You may feel embarrassed or shy at kickoff, only your efforts will pay off. People of a cultural group will detect if y'all take the take a chance of coming to one of their events. If it is difficult for you lot to exist the merely person like yourself attention, yous can bring a buddy with y'all and support each other in making friends. At these events, it is important to participate, just make certain you do not become the middle of the event in order to lift up the voices and actions of the people leading the consequence.

Examine your biases about people from other cultures.

We all carry misinformation and stereotypes most people in different cultures. Peculiarly, when we are young, we learn this information in bits and pieces from Idiot box, from listening to people talk, and from the culture at large. We are not bad people because we caused this; no one requested to be misinformed. Merely in club to build relationships with people of different cultures, we have to become enlightened of the misinformation we acquired.

An fantabulous way to become aware of your own stereotypes is to pick groups that you generalize about and write down your opinions. Once you have, examine the thoughts that came to your heed and where you acquired them.

Some other way to become aware of stereotypes is to talk about them with people who accept similar cultures to your own. In such settings you can talk virtually the misinformation you acquired without being offensive to people from a particular group. You lot can assemble with a friend or two and talk about how you acquired stereotypes or fears of other different people. Yous can reply these kinds of questions:

How did your parents feel virtually unlike ethnic, racial, or religious groups?
What did your parents communicate to you with their deportment and words?
Were your parents friends with people from many unlike groups?
What did you learn in school about a item group?
Was there a lack of information most some people?
Are in that location some people y'all shy abroad from? Why?

Ask people questions nearly their cultures, customs, and views

People, for the most role, want to be asked questions about their lives and their cultures. Many of us were told that asking questions was nosy; but if we are thoughtful, asking questions tin can help you lot learn about people of different cultures and help build relationships. People are usually pleasantly surprised when others show interest in their cultures. If you lot are sincere and you can mind, people will tell you a lot.

Read nearly other people's cultures and histories

It helps to read nearly and larn about people'south cultures and histories. If you know something about the reality of someone's life and history, it shows that you care enough to accept the fourth dimension to notice out nigh it. It also gives you background information that volition make it easier to inquire questions that make sense.

Nonetheless, you don't take to be an expert on someone'southward civilisation to get to know them or to ask questions. People who are, themselves, from a civilization are unremarkably the all-time experts, anyway.

Don't forget to care and show caring

It is easy to forget that the ground of any relationship is caring. Everyone wants to care and be cared almost. Caring nearly people is what makes a human relationship existent. Don't let your awkwardness around cultural differences get in the mode of caring about people.

Heed to people tell their stories

If you become an opportunity to hear someone tell you her life story first hand, you tin learn a lot--and build a stiff relationship at the same time. Every person has an important story to tell. Each person's story tells something about their civilisation.

Listening to people's stories, we can get a fuller picture of what people'southward lives are like--their feelings, their nuances, and the richness of their lives. Listening to people also helps u.s. get through our numbness-- in that location is a real person before united states of america, not someone who is reduced to stereotypes in the media.

Additionally, listening to members of groups that accept been discriminated against can give u.s.a. a better understanding of what that feel is similar. Listening gives us a picture of discrimination that is more real than what we tin become from reading an commodity or listening to the radio.

Exercise:

You can informally ask people in your neighborhood or organisation to tell yous a part of their life stories as a member of a particular grouping. You lot can also incorporate this activity into a workshop or retreat for your group or organization. Have people each accept v or ten minutes to talk about 1 piece of their life stories. If the group is big, you will probably accept to divide into small groups, and so everyone gets a adventure to speak.

Detect differences in communication styles and values; don't presume that the majority'southward way is the correct way.

We all have a tendency to assume that the way that about people practice things is the acceptable, normal, or right way. As customs workers, we need to learn well-nigh cultural differences in values and advice styles, and non assume that the majority fashion is the right way to recall or behave.

Case:

You are in a group give-and-take. Some group members don't speak up, while others dominate, filling all the silences. The more vocal members of the group become exasperated that others don't talk. It besides seems that the more vocal people are those that are members of the more than mainstream culture, while those who are less vocal are from minority cultures.

How practise we understand this? How can this be resolved?

In some cultures, people feel uncomfortable with silence, so they speak to fill the silences. In other cultures, it is customary to await for a menstruum of silence before speaking. If there aren't whatsoever silences, people from those cultures may not ever speak. Also, members of some groups (women, people of depression income, some racial and ethnic minorities, and others) don't speak up because they accept received messages from gild at large that their contribution is not equally important equally others; they accept gotten into the habit of deferring their thinking to the thinking of others.

When some people don't share their thinking, we all lose out. We all need the opinions and voices of those people who have traditionally been discouraged from contributing.

In situations similar the one described in a higher place, condign impatient with people for non speaking is usually counter-productive. Yet, you lot can construction a meeting to encourage the quieter people to speak. For instance, you tin:

Have people intermission into pairs before discussing a topic in the larger group.

At sure times accept each person in the circumvolve make a annotate. (People can pass if they want to.)

Follow a guideline that everyone speaks one time, before anyone speaks twice.

Invite the quieter people to lead part of the meeting.

Talk about the trouble openly in a coming together, and invite the more than vocal people to try to speak less often.

Between meetings, enquire the quieter people what would assistance them speak, or ask them for their ideas on how a meeting should exist run.

A high school basketball team has to exercise and play on many afternoons and evenings. One squad member is a recent immigrant whose family requires her to nourish the altogether parties of all the relatives in her extended family. The passenger vehicle is angry with the parents for this requirement, because information technology takes his actor away from the team.

How do we sympathize this? How can this exist resolved?

Families have unlike values, peculiarly when it comes to family closeness, loyalty, and responsibility. In many immigrant and indigenous families, young people are required to put their family's needs showtime, before the requirements of extra-curricular activities. Young people from immigrant families who grow upward in the U.Due south. often feel torn betwixt the bulk culture and the civilization of their families; they feel pressure from each cultures to live according to its values, and they feel they take to choose between the two.

As community workers, we need to support and respect minority and immigrant families and their values. It may already exist a huge concession on the part of a family to allow a teenager to participate in extracurricular activities at all. We need to brand allowances for the cultural differences and attempt to help young people feel that they can have both worlds--instead of having to reject ane ready of values for some other.

As community builders, it helps to develop relationships with parents. If a young person sees her parents have relationships with people from the mainstream culture, it can help her feel that their family is accustomed. It supports the teen in being more continued to her family unit and her community--and also, both relationships are disquisitional protective factors for drug and alcohol abuse and other unsafe behaviors. In improver, in building relationships with parents, we develop lines of communication, then when conflicts arise, they tin be more easily resolved.

Run a risk making mistakes

As you are building relationships with people who accept unlike cultural backgrounds than your own, you volition probably make mistakes at some betoken. That happens. Don't let the fearfulness of making mistakes go along you from going ahead and building relationships.

If yous say or do something that is insensitive, you tin learn something from it. Ask the affected person what bothered or offended them, apologize, and and then continue in building the relationship. Don't let guilt bog you down.

Learn to be an marry

One of the best ways to help you build relationships with people of dissimilar cultures is to demonstrate that you lot are willing to take a stand confronting bigotry when information technology occurs. People will be much more motivated to get to know yous if they see that y'all are willing to take risks on their behalf.

We likewise accept to brainwash ourselves and keep informed then that nosotros empathize the problems that each group faces and we get involved in their struggles--instead of sitting on the sidelines and watching from a altitude. Educate yourself near other cultures by doing your own research, don't ask others to practise it for y'all. At that place are many resources in this affiliate to help yous learn.

In Summary

Friendship is powerful. It is our connection to each other that gives meaning to our lives. Our caring for each other is ofttimes what motivates united states of america to make change. And establishing connections with people from diverse backgrounds can be fundamental in making significant changes in our communities.

As individuals, and in groups, we can change our communities. We can ready up neighborhoods and institutions in which people commit themselves to working to form stiff relationships and alliances with people of diverse cultures and backgrounds. We can establish networks and coalitions in which people are knowledgeable about each other's struggles, and are willing to lend a mitt. Together, we can do it.

Online Resource

Brownish University Training Materials:Cultural Competence and Community Studies: Concepts and Practices for Cultural Competence The Northeast Teaching Partnership provides online access to PowerPoint training slides on topics in inquiry ideals and cultural competence in environmental research. These take been created for professionals/students in environmental sciences, health, and policy; and community-based enquiry. If you are interested in receiving an electronic copy of 1 the presentations, only download their Materials Asking Form (found on the main Training Presentations page under "related files"), complete the form, and email it to NEEPethics@yahoo.com.

The Center for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services collects and describes early childhood/early on intervention resources and serves equally bespeak of exchange for users.

Affiliate 8: Respect for Diverseness in the "Introduction to Community Psychology" explains cultural humility every bit an approach to diversity, the dimensions of multifariousness, the complexity of identity, and important cultural considerations.

Culture Matters is a cross-cultural training workbook developed by the Peace Corps to assistance new volunteers larn the knowledge and skills to work successfully and respectfully in other cultures.

The International & Cross-Cultural Evaluation Topical Interest Group, an organization that is affiliated with the American Evaluation Association, provides evaluators who are interested in cantankerous-cultural issues with opportunities for professional person development.

The Multicultural Pavilion offers resources and dialogue for educators, students and activists on all aspects of multicultural teaching.

The National Center for Cultural Competence at Georgetown University increases the chapters of health care and mental health programs to design, implement and evaluate culturally and linguistically competent service delivery systems. Publications and web links available.

National Public Radio'due south Life Kit project discusses the importance of having parents talk about social identities with their children.

SIL International makes bachelor "The Stranger's Eyes," an article that speaks to cultural sensitivity with questions that tin can be strong tools for discussion.

Study, Give-and-take and Action on Issues of Race, Racism and Inclusion: a partial list of resources utilized and prepared by Yusef Mgeni.

Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack: Reflect on how your privilege allows you to walk through the world in society to better connect with others in this essay by Peggy McIntosh.

Organizations:

Center for Living Republic
289 Fox Farm Rd
PO Box 8187
Brattleboro, VT 05304-8187
(802) 254-1234

National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI)
1835 M Street, N.W., Suite 715
Washington, D.C. 20006
(202) 785-9400

Re-evaluation Counseling
719 Second Avenue Due north
Seattle, WA 98109
(206) 284-0113

Southern Poverty Constabulary Heart
400 Washington Ave.
Montgomery, AL 36104

Print Resource

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Brownish, C.,& Mazza, Thousand. (1997).Healing into activity. Washington, DC: National Coalition Building Institute.

DuPraw, M.,& Axner, Chiliad. (1997).Working on common cross-cultural communication challenges. In Martha McCoy, et. al., Toward a More Perfect Marriage in an Age of Multifariousness. Pomfret, CT: Topsfield Foundation, 12-16.

Ford, C. (1994).We can all get along: fifty steps you tin can have to end racism. New York, NY: Dell Publishing.

Kaye, G., & Wolff, T. (1995).From the ground upwardly: A workbook on coalition building and community evolution. Amherst, MA: AHEC/Community Partners. (Available from Tom Wolff and Associates.)

McCoy, M.,& et al. (1997).Toward a more than perfect union in an age of diverseness: A guide for building stronger communities through public dialogue. Pomfret, CT: Topsfield Foundation.

McIntosh, P. (1988).White privilege and male privilege: A personal account of coming to see correspondences through work in women's studies. Wellesley, MA: Center for Research on Women, Wellesley College.

Okihiro, G. (1994).Margins and mainstreams: Asians in American history and culture. Seattle, WA: The Academy of Washington Press.

Takaki, R. (1993).A different mirror: A history of multicultural America. Boston: Fiddling, Brown and Visitor.